King of Thorns

In book two of the Broken Empire trilogy, the boy who would be king has gained the throne--but the crown is a heavy weight to bear...

At age nine, Prince Honorous Jorg Ancrath vowed to avenge his slaughtered mother and brother--and to punish his father for not doing so. At fifteen, he began to fulfill that vow. Now, at eighteen, he must fight for what he has taken by torture and treachery.

Haunted by the pain of his past, and plagued by nightmares of the atrocities he has committed, King Jorg is filled with rage. And even as his need for revenge continues to consume him, an overwhelming enemy force marches on his castle.

Jorg knows that he cannot win a fair fight. But he has found a long-hidden cache of ancient artifacts. Some might call them magic. Jorg is not certain--all he knows is that their secrets can be put to terrible use in the coming battle...

Jorg's development to a more reasonable human being, or at least reasonable by his standards, was well done. The inclusion of the builders equipment wasn't overwhelming and didn't take over the story, I was always left wanting to know more about it but not in an annoying way.
I like a book that makes me work a little to figure out what's going on and the flashback story style kept me paying close attention so as not to miss anything important.
I look forward to finding out how the story is wrapped up in the next volume.

I found this series to be one of the worse written. I dont know why people rate him so highly but I hated his mixing fantasy with history, character development, continuity etc. I read these out of spite waiting for it to get better and it did some but not enough to salvage it for me. A sub par series with a lame plot and poor delivery. Character development was annoying at best with unlikable and simply stupid characters. Just my two cents but compared to writers like Sanderson, Erikson, Jordan etc he is just bad. YMMV